


GAMMA

by chennieforyourthoughts



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, Blood, M/M, Minor Injuries, Panic Attacks, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-05-15 20:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19302817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chennieforyourthoughts/pseuds/chennieforyourthoughts
Summary: After serving in the Galactic War of SD 250, Chanyeol is found by Jongdae, who needs his piloting skills to find one of the covert agents abandoned in the final days of the conflict.





	GAMMA

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note:**  
>  Prompt: self-prompt
> 
> As my friend J once said, "aliens = people might think abo." So if you're here because you thought this might be ABO based on the title (and didn't read the tags), I am sorry to disappoint because this is my attempt at writing decently-realistic science fiction. More specialized terms used in the fic are defined below, but please feel free to skip over them!
> 
>  **Terms:**  
>  _GAMMA_ ("γ," no units): the Lorentz factor; used in calculations which show that observers in different frames of reference may measure different sequences of events, velocities, and even times from each other. γ becomes large when the velocity of an object is a large fraction of the speed of light, which means that the amount of time that has passed for someone on a ship moving at a high fraction of the speed of light is noticeably shorter than the amount of time that has passed for a person outside the ship and moving slower.
> 
>  _G_ (" _G_ forces," N (newtons)): the force due to gravity.
> 
>  _g_ (" _g_ 's," _m/s²_ (meters per second squared)): the acceleration due to gravity; the product of _g_ and the mass of whatever object you're talking about in _kg_ is _G,_ the force due to gravity.
> 
>  _c_ (".# _c_ ," _m/s_ (meters per second)): the speed of light; the exact speed depends on the medium (material) through which the light is traveling, but in space/vacuum 1 _c_ is approximately 3 E 8 (3 x 10⁸) _m/s,_ or about 6.71 E 8 (6.71 x 10⁸) _miles/hour._

There was something interminable about life on the station, Chanyeol believed. He was still adjusting to its simulated gravity, unused to its spin after a tour on a warship, but that alone provided little distraction. The city itself was somewhat better, with all the people and all the noise, but a part of Chanyeol couldn’t take the crowds, couldn’t take the enclosed spaces, and wanted nothing more than to be _away,_ out amongst the stars with a vaguely feminine voice whispering secrets in his ears—a killer, not a lover.

 _A killer,_ Chanyeol thought. The skies inside him were too calm for his hands to shake; they had not for a long, long time, since they had first clasped around the yoke and given his crew wings. He could hear a group at the table next to him discussing the Planet List, and kept an ear open as he ate his meal (oatmeal and toast and something _resembling_ bacon, he wasn’t allowed to eat anything too rich yet).

“I’ve heard the Phoenix System had some planets go,” a young man said, and his comrades leaned forwards on their elbows. “Thanks to the Galactic Council, of course,” he continued, and Chanyeol’s stomach flipped.

He didn’t know the places he had been, according to his work’s navigation—the Council was good at that, keeping the most vital pieces of information reserved for the generals only—but that didn’t keep him from knowing deep down in his gut what each coordinate meant; what each planet looked like from the front viewscreen; what each bombing run would bring, the dive of a shadow faster than a falcon and far more silent in the void.

Chanyeol knew it was 22:00 when the cafeteria fell utterly silent and his com buzzed against his thigh. He punched noise-cancelling earbuds in as far as they would go and started playing the album he had picked for exactly this purpose, one that was loud and driving, and kept his eyes up as he put his tray away.

 _Eyes up, eyes up, eyes up._ If Chanyeol kept his eyes up in the cafeteria, he wouldn’t see an update on someone’s comm screen.

He stepped out into the chaos of the station’s main street. The ceiling glowed with news reports projected over the studded field of space. _Eyes down, eyes down, eyes down._ If Chanyeol kept his eyes on the ground just in front of his feet, he wouldn’t see an update on an advertisement or news screen.

The two words still echoed in Chanyeol’s mind when he stepped into the apartment of an old friend, but when he removed his earbuds, everything was blessedly silent for the time being. He stepped out onto the balcony, or what constituted the balcony in a station, and soaked in the starlight from all four sides. The cheap couch he slept on—or, rather, tried to sleep on—called to him, so he sprawled across it, surrounded by space and protected by transparent metal.

His comm didn’t need to buzz to catch his attention again. It was burning a hole into his leg with its weight, hot hot hot and oh-so-guilty. Chanyeol’s fingers fumbled on its edges as he dragged it out. The single notification took up the whole screen, for it was an official governing one, and practically taunted Chanyeol to click on it.

 _The Official List of Surviving and Lost Planets. Property of the Galactic Council._ Names and star systems blurred before Chanyeol’s eyes as he read as quickly as he could, before he settled onto one.

_Phoenix I—_

 

γ γ γ      

  

Chanyeol enjoyed the biscuits they had on the station in the mornings. They were fluffy enough and just barely dusted golden on the tops, and like many others in the cafeteria around him, Chanyeol made a point of picking them up when they were available.

Like the biscuits, the clouds projected on the ceiling of the station were fluffy, although they reminded Chanyeol of home. The planet around which the station was in orbit was habitable, and indeed many humans and other lifeforms lived there, but Chanyeol had not used his shore leave yet and therefore took the stories of dragons living in the planet’s clouds with a grain of salt. Hyperbole in storytelling helped him and many other soldiers handle and process the war, although now Chanyeol did not enjoy hearing or telling stories very much at all.

As he had checked the Planets List the night before, Chanyeol was no longer confined to looking at his feet and could fully appreciate the station. He didn’t love its cold steel architecture, but he spent his days wandering the city in the station to see how his fellow inhabitants were making it feel more like home. There were a few who had been on the station since the beginning, but there were also many who had been driven to the station during the war as refugees or after the war as Drifters.

Chanyeol didn’t have a plan for his day, as with most of his days of exploration, and merely turned a direction off the main drag he hadn’t taken before. His footsteps were heavy, but he was not alone; due to the number of inhabitants of the station, it was almost impossible to be alone in public spaces. He saw flags of home worlds hanging on balconies and in windows; some Chanyeol guessed were families, but others he suspected were a younger generation less afraid of expressing opinions which could be considered subversive. Indeed, some of the home worlds displayed had been colonies of the Galactic Council, and although it was clear to no one what would happen to the colonies now that the Council had fallen, if there was a way trouble would brew, it would be through political rivalries.

One flag in particular caught Chanyeol’s eye. It was a medium blue, a few shades darker than a clear country sky, with the emblem of a white flower front and center. Chanyeol tried not to let unease creep under his skin, but every step he took within sight of the flag reminded him that it had been that people who had made the voice inside his head. _But not all of that people were connected to her,_ Chanyeol reminded himself. He passed by without incident, but tension still remained in his shoulders even after the flag and the habitation it was connected to had faded into the distance.

Ozone settled heavily on Chanyeol’s palate, metallic and sharp. He guessed he had reached the manufacturing area of the station, following the familiar tangs of chemicals to a place of shipbuilding. Chanyeol heaved a sigh and stepped off to the side of the walkway to check his comm. There weren’t any personal notifications on the screen, although there were a few current news headlines: _EXO Sector Regroups in the Aftermath of Turmoil; Doctors, Nurses, and First Responders in Dramatic Shortage_ ; and the like.

Something clicked like claws on the concrete sidewalk, raising the fine hairs on the back of Chanyeol’s neck. He looked up and didn’t quite jump, but certainly gripped his comm a bit tighter. It wasn’t every day one came face to face with a giant mechanical…. cat, was it? No, it was certainly not an everyday occurrence, and yes, upon further study it did appear to Chanyeol to be a mechanical feline. The top of the cat, from its back down to its shoulders and haunches, was made of some sort of metal painted dark, while the bottom of the cat from the shoulder and haunches down to its paws was left as the lighter tint of the original metal. Its eyes were an oddly luminous grey, like if a storm cloud had the edge of a blade half-hidden behind the first few layers.

“May I help you?” Chanyeol asked; he was nothing if not polite, even when he had the strange feeling that this cat was a portent of something. He vaguely remembered an old tall tale from back on Earth about a black cat crossing your path bringing bad luck, but this cat seemed to no longer be walking either across or away from his path. Instead, it was simply staring at him, expression unreadable behind those keen optics.

The cat did not open its mouth to speak, and the unnaturalness raised more alarms in Chanyeol’s subconscious. “My master Chen would like to have a word with you,” it said, inclining its head downwards and towards Chanyeol in a sign of mechanical respect. “His workshop is not far, and it is possible for us to follow this road a majority of the way there.”

 _Chen? Chanyeol had heard of the engineer Chen before._ Chanyeol thought for a moment. He didn’t have anything to do on the station, and didn’t have anyone waiting for him out there in the galaxy. He had no ties, and nothing was his to lose. “Please show me to him, then,” he said, and some little part of his mind knew nothing would be the same after.

The taste of metal on his tongue got stronger the closer he and the strange mechanical cat got to Chen’s warehouse. Chanyeol guessed that it was used for shipbuilding, based on the particular cocktail of chemicals he could smell and his past knowledge from the warship. The cat led him down a smaller side-street off the main thoroughfare; Chanyeol stayed alert, although he doubted he would fall victim to a crime. His guide stopped before a rather uninteresting door, and Chanyeol watched as the door performed what must have been a scan on the mechanical feline. It unlocked and slid open soundlessly, and the cat turned around to look at him. “Will you come in?” it asked, stepping to the side to give Chanyeol room to enter.

“I will,” he replied, and walked forward into the shaded warehouse.

At the very least, it did appear to be an engineer’s warehouse on the inside, making Chanyeol slightly less suspicious that he was being played. Most surfaces were covered in datapads, other electronics, and tools—Chanyeol recognized various wrenches and welding materials from when he learned to emergency patch ships that had taken critical hits, and was therefore unsurprised when he looked farther into the warehouse to see what was clearly a spacecraft. It was a small to medium sized craft, efficient in its lines. Chanyeol could tell it was for space flight only, not in-atmosphere, and suspected that it was faster than his battleship had been, given the enviable construction.

Claws clicked on the warehouse’s cement floor, bringing Chanyeol’s attention back to the mech beside him. The cat didn’t deign to look at him again while stalking towards the ship at the center of the warehouse, making Chanyeol roll his eyes. His sister had had a cat once, although it had been a more typical organic cat. Chanyeol could hear music playing from over near the ship, some sort of alien pop, and figured that meant Chen was in.

When they got closer to the ship and the music, Chanyeol decided to say something so the engineer was aware of his presence. “Hello!” he called, and the cat whipped its head around to glare at him.

“Hello, one minute please!” Chanyeol came to a stop when his finicky feline guide did, and together they waited for Chen to appear. Both could hear the whine and grind of a drill, and Chanyeol wondered what part of the ship was being worked on. Eventually, the noise cut out, leaving only the pop music playing in the background. Chanyeol couldn’t understand the language and wondered if Chen could. Then again, Chanyeol wasn’t sure if Chen was human like him, either.

With the not-so-soft clatter of a drill being not-so-carefully placed on a worktable, a leg appeared and a body followed. Chanyeol wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but Chen did not seem too different from it, although his dramatic cat-eye liner was certainly eye-catching. Truthfully, Chanyeol saw some definite similarities between him and the mechanical beastie working for him, especially when Chen broke into a smile.

“You must be First Lieutenant Park Chanyeol,” he greeted, and Chanyeol nodded.

“Yes, sir,” Chanyeol replied, partly out of manners and partly out of habit.

The engineer managed to look welcoming rather than patronizing with his Cheshire cat grin, and Chanyeol couldn’t help but be reminded of what he himself had been like before, how much he had enjoyed bringing smiles like that to people’s faces. Oh, and the music. He couldn’t forget the music, even now. “Please, call me Jongdae,” Chen said. “If there’s anyone who should be calling someone sir, it would be me with respect to you.”

Chanyeol almost chuckled at that, a rare burst of amusement fluttering through him. Jongdae was now leaning against the worktable, and Chanyeol noted that the leather jacket he wore pinched a bit at the shoulders, and cut off a bit higher above the waistline of Jongdae’s jeans than he would have expected. The jacket was clearly a few sizes too small, so Chanyeol wondered why Jongdae was wearing it. It wasn’t as if leather jackets were difficult to come by, even on a space station like the one they were on. That being said, it was an attractive jacket, the leather dyed white and kept in pristine condition. “Nice jacket,” Chanyeol complimented, and he honestly meant it, but something sobered in Jongdae’s expression.

“Thank you. Well, you must be wondering why I sent our good Tan to bring you here.” _Tan? Ah, he must mean the cat._ Jongdae was right, however, in that Chanyeol was indeed wondering why on Earth—or, rather, why in space—he had been summoned by a giant mechanical feline who took him to meet Chen, who was apparently named Jongdae, without any clarification or context whatsoever. So Chanyeol nodded, and Jongdae seemed to take that as his signal to continue. “You worked for the Galactic Council during the Galactic War of SD 250 as a pilot of the GC EXODUS. I worked for the Council during that war as a weapons engineer. But it is not based on my service that I have called you here. You see, my partner—and lab partner—is an engineer for the Galactic Council as well.” At that, Tan meandered over and rubbed against Jongdae’s leg. Its optics were fixed on Jongdae, and although they were mechanical parts, Chanyeol couldn’t help but read emotion within them. Perhaps he was projecting.

“What do you have left, Chanyeol, now that the war is over?” Jongdae was staring straight at him now, and Chanyeol noticed that he had a bit of mech tech in his eyes through its faint metallic glimmer.

Chanyeol did, too; it aided him with in-flight navigation. “I have my life, a few outfits, and a pension.”

Jongdae sighed, and Chanyeol wanted to mirror it. “I, too, have my life, although I was lucky enough to have kept my lab and technologies, and therefore my livelihood.” Something in the engineer’s posture had changed; Chanyeol was unsure exactly what it was, but was curious to find out. “My partner gave his everything to the Council, and they left him with nothing. They left him to die as one of their agents in the field.”

This, Chanyeol had heard of. It had been one of the major news stories last week. Thousands of Galactic Council Intelligence Agents, abandoned by their crumbling government, were stranded in hostile communities with little hope of rescue. Not that Chanyeol begrudged the communities their hostility, and the agents had known the perils of the job they had taken, but he still was appalled the Council had left every single one of them to die. “Was he sent to gather information on the Kingdom’s technology?”

A nod. “Yes, he was. I wouldn’t be telling you any of this if I weren’t desperate, but despite his good survival skills, Minseok probably won’t make it long now that the communities that supported the Kingdom know there are agents in their midst. It will be a witch hunt.” Now Jongdae and Tan had both locked on to Chanyeol, and there truly was emotion in the cat’s optics. “Please, we need a pilot. I don’t know if you’re trying to find a sense of purpose in the aftermath, like me, but if you want to make an effort to do good after all that we’ve done, maybe this is a place to start.”

 _Guilt tripping. Nice._ Chanyeol was ready to say no then and there, but something about the words spoken to him stopped him. It was probably because although he did not like them, they were correct, which is why he disliked them.

“Alright,” Chanyeol said, feeling increasingly like the wheel of fate was slipping out from underneath his feet—or maybe that was just the station’s rotation. “I’ll do it.”

Something desperate evaporated from Jongdae’s eyes, and Chanyeol wondered if he had already started doing good. “I cannot thank you enough already…. but would you like to meet your lady now?”

 

γ γ γ

 

“Her name is _Horololo,_ I built her up from the base frame; Minseok hyung handled her AI.” Jongdae traced along a sleek curve; indeed, since the ship was space-faring, the top of the exterior was heavily curved, although the bottom was flatter to allow for easy landing. She didn’t have wings as far as Chanyeol could see, although it was possible they were foldable and currently stored internally.

Chanyeol hadn’t seen the interior or the cockpit yet, so he wanted to withhold his final judgement until he knew more. “She is very beautiful,” he said, because she was— it was her creation that made her so, the careful welds so smooth her surface looked like a pane of glass.

“You flatter me!” Jongdae cackled, opening a door that seemingly appeared from nowhere. “If you don’t have anywhere to be tonight, perhaps we could take her for a spin?” There was something close to brashly challenging in Jongdae’s eyes, and it sent a zip of electricity down Chanyeol’s spine.

Chanyeol was not about to back down from such a test, and Jongdae seemed to know that. “It would be an honor,” he said, and Jongdae pointed an arm into the cockpit; Chanyeol followed his direction and climbed up the few steps. As he settled into the pilot’s seat, he caught sight of the warehouse floor stories below and Jongdae standing nearby on the elevated platform and felt all the blood drain from his face. _Deep breaths. Deep breaths._

The engineer slipped in after him with ease, crossing over to the co-pilot’s chair. To Chanyeol’s surprise, Tan followed, walking on into the back of the cockpit behind the seats. Chanyeol turned his head to follow the cat’s movement, and watched as Tan settled inside a nest of sorts and plugged into the wall of the ship with a large cable. The door shut, sealing the trio inside. “Alright, my lady is pretty standard. Yoke and floor pedals, the usual works.” As Jongdae listed off more parts helpful for flight, Chanyeol inspected the cockpit to familiarize himself. “I can radio ahead to flight control to let them know we’re leaving.”

“That would be helpful, thank you.” Jongdae nodded and pulled back the warehouse roof—a handy feature which Chanyeol appreciated—while the pilot unfolded the wings and adjusted engine positioning. “You really thought of everything, didn’t you?”

“That’s my specialty,” Jongdae purred, and Chanyeol wanted to roll his eyes but avoided the temptation.

Time crawled by as Chanyeol waited for Jongdae to get approval from the station, punctuated by the odd rumbling purr coming from Tan. After what seemed like a millennium, the reply to Jongdae came over the comms channel and Chanyeol performed a vertical takeoff, very slowly lifting the craft through the open roof. The warehouse was on the very edge of the station, right by the spaceport, so they were allowed to line up for exit and wait until it was their turn to reach the front of the line. Chanyeol could now hear Jongdae breathing even over the hum of the rather annoying mechanical cat, and wondered why it had picked up. _He wasn’t scared, was he?_

Then it was their turn, and space reached out to meet them. Outside of an atmosphere, the stars did not twinkle, and Chanyeol found himself once again mesmerized by their fiery souls. He could hear the rumble of the engines inside the ship, but knew that outside was void. Vacuum. Although light reached Chanyeol and Jongdae through the viewscreen, no sound waves could propagate and so everything outside of their little bubble was silence.

“How about we go to Cygnusa and then stop on the far side?” Jongdae was pointing at it in the overhead, although Chanyeol was already familiar with the planet. It was a gas giant, the largest and most massive planet in the Cygnus system and therefore the first one to be discovered by humanity. Not that there were only humans in the system, oh no; the Cygnus system had its own native lifeforms, and now, remarkably, they coexisted with human settlers on the station Chanyeol and Jongdae had just left and the planet it orbited.

“You’ve got it,” Chanyeol replied, notifying ships within range of their intended path and taking a steadying breath. “How fast can we go?”

“As fast as you would like,” Jongdae murmured, and Chanyeol felt more electricity jump through him. “She has a sprint speed of .96 _c_ _,_ although that isn’t her specialty.”

Chanyeol groaned. “You can’t just _tell_ me things like that!” The yoke felt almost warm in his hands, familiar in its curve even after serving time piloting a rather unorthodox ship. Sure enough, Jongdae was laughing at him, and Chanyeol reminded himself to take a deep breath. “Preparing for acceleration to .5 _c._ Brace.” Chanyeol’s fingers were confident in their hold, and he felt the ship around him itself start to purr. “Three. Two. One.”

It made sense to Chanyeol then, the ship and her crew. He struggled to open his eyes, but was glad he did—the view of the stars, nearby systems, and other galaxies was stellar. At half the speed of light, even with the built-in protection from the ship and their helmets, every motion was painful, and Chanyeol wondered how Jongdae was doing but did not want to turn his head to look.

They decelerated slowly to give the humans time to adjust. By the time they were at 0.00001 _c,_ Chanyeol could talk easily, and took back over piloting. The gorgeous vermilion gas giant called to him as he put the ship into orbit. “Thanks, Tan.”

“You’re welcome,” the cat said, and Chanyeol closed his eyes.

 

“You can put her through her paces, if you would like.” Jongdae had undone his primary harness and helmet at the dramatically slower speed, although he kept the cross-body straps of his secondary harness on so he didn’t float away from his seat. Chanyeol had removed his helmet but not his harness.

“What’s the top speed for no helmets?” he asked.

Jongdae shifted where he had been leaning against the flight instruments. “0.001 _c_ is probably the fastest responsible without a helmet on. _Horololo_ ’s good, but she’s not quite as good at taking care of her crew as one of your warships.”

The engineer was right, of course. The Council’s warship fleet, and its cruisers, destroyers, and carriers in particular, was known for its survivability. Their ships were built for war, and for keeping the officers stationed on them alive.

 _Physically alive, if not necessarily in spirit, but that was another matter which the Council preferred not to consider._ Jongdae was staring at him, Chanyeol knew, but for the moment didn’t want to do anything about it. “That’s fine. I’ll test out some flight capabilities now—best strap yourself back in.”

As Jongdae’s harness began clicking back into place, Chanyeol checked the engines' statuses. He’d folded up the wings for their trip over to minimize the possibility that they were damaged by space debris, but now he unfolded them so he could use their thrusters for greater maneuverability. “What’re you planning, tiger?”

Chanyeol turned the ship so it was facing away from the surface of the planet using the thrusters, then ignited the engines. He, Jongdae, and Tan were all pushed back against their rests as _Horololo_ accelerated to escape velocity, and almost before Chanyeol knew it, they were free from orbit and traveling away from the planet towards interstellar space. “I’d say I’m more wolf than tiger!” he shouted, and Jongdae cackled. Even Tan’s purr changed a bit in pitch; Chanyeol wondered if their feline co-pilot was amused.

The harnesses yanked on their bodies when Chanyeol sent the ship into a steep bank, curving back in towards the planet and accelerating hard in the latter part of the turn. Jongdae yelped at the sudden pressure, but started screaming part of the way through their slingshot. Chanyeol could hear it was made of pure joy, much like his own grin as the air was punched from his lungs by sudden _G_ forces. “You’re crazy!” Jongdae shouted back once he’d stopped screaming and successfully hauled in a breath. They had finished the slingshot and were once again heading towards interstellar space, this time at a much higher velocity but with lower acceleration. Although Chanyeol had reduced their acceleration, he hadn't lowered it enough that it was zero rather than net positive, so in truth they were pushing the 0.001 _c_ limit rather quickly. Chanyeol knew that he would have to rein it in shortly.

So after a few practice turn and burns at lower speeds, Chanyeol decelerated them to rest. The engines were barely running, just enough to keep the ship from being pulled in by Cygnusa’s gravity. “That was almost as fun as—” Jongdae cut off abruptly, so abruptly that Chanyeol was concerned as to whether or not something had happened to him. “Ah, it doesn’t matter. Would you like to see her specialty now?”

“There’s more?” Chanyeol didn’t mean to raise his voice, but thankfully Jongdae and Tan seemed unperturbed. He’d already seen that the ship could _accelerate_ and had inspected the weapons possibilities—which, although they weren’t close to what the military had, would be plenty suitable for keeping off scavengers and pirates—so he hadn’t been expecting anything else.

“There’s more. Can you check the _g'_ s for me?” Jongdae sounded almost smug as Chanyeol did as he was told.

“It looks like we’ve got about 23.52 _m/s_ ², where we’re located.” It was then that Chanyeol offhandedly realized that he had grown used to Tan’s low rumble throughout the ship. The sound almost seemed to be coming _from_ the ship, a continuous satisfied purr.

Something whispered in his ear, making Chanyeol jump so hard he smacked his knees on the front of the instrument panel. “What is this?”

Jongdae extended his hands towards him, palms up and movements slow; if anything, that made Chanyeol angrier. He wasn’t some animal to be tamed! “Chanyeol, let’s take a moment to breathe—“

If a gaze could smite, Chanyeol’s would have. He didn’t want to take a moment to “breathe,” he wanted the intruder out! “Please listen to me Chanyeol, you can’t tear out mech tech mods, you’ll deafen yourself!” Like Chanyeol cared about pain, if it meant getting it out. Maybe if he were deaf, he couldn’t hear the insidious voice dripping hebona in his ear. “Tan, back off!”

The thoughts inside Chanyeol’s head were loud. The thoughts outside of it were silent. Something warm was tracing a sluggish path down to his jaw, and judging by the spooked quality to Jongdae’s eyes, Chanyeol had a fairly good idea what it was. It was as if his ears were plugged, and he couldn’t tell if he could no longer hear or if Tan had simply stopped purring. No, he could hear his own staggered breathing, so he could still hear.

“Chanyeol.” Yes, Chanyeol could hear that, even though he did not want to. “You won’t believe me, I know, but I only wanted Tan to explain the Temp-Grav to you. I should have known better and I am sorry.”

Jongdae’s eyes were still spooked, but there was more for Chanyeol to read in them now. For once, it wasn’t pity; perhaps it was something with a bit more understanding than that.

Maybe, now that he was set to spend more time with the engineer, Chanyeol could once again learn how to see what Jongdae was expressing. There were many things Chanyeol wanted to ask now, just so he could watch the way Jongdae would light up when talking about his technology—the antithesis of the pain he was seeing.

“The Temp-Grav. Is that something of yours?” Chanyeol blurted out, and wanted to smack himself for saying that instead of apologizing. _I should apologize, right?_ But Jongdae’s eyes were lighting up just as Chanyeol had hoped they might.

“It is! It creates an object of programmable mass and volume, and therefore density, and ejects it behind the ship. This should make it easy for the pilot to have gravity to play with.”

The stars almost seemed to flicker. They didn’t look particularly warm to Chanyeol at that time, but they didn’t look particularly cold, either. They just…. were. “How do you manage _that?”_

Jongdae’s smile was also a flicker, a quick off-on. “I have my ways, and Tan does too.”

“May I try it?” As he had suspected, Chanyeol was taken out of his own head by seeing a bit of Jongdae’s. “It is the button beside the gravitational field strength monitor, correct?”

For a split second, it was silent save for the engines, but that did not last long. “Correct, that will bring up a selection menu in your heads up display. Normal selection process and everything.”

Chanyeol had almost forgotten about the blood until he felt it began to soak into his shirt. Something was telling him to not turn the ship around yet, but it wasn’t the AI’s voice speaking to him this time. “Would connection with Tan help with the execution of maneuvers?” the pilot asked, flicking through the options on the heads up display.

Hesitancy wasn’t something Chanyeol expected from Jongdae, but that is what he got. Jongdae clearly knew that even though Chanyeol seemed absorbed in the display, he was being watched, and took his time in replying: “For maneuvers at high speeds, high acceleration, or high object densities, yes, but within the helmetless zone we will be fine with your competence level.”

“Alright, I’ll try something small then. Moving in five, four, three…” The engines lit a bit brighter in the surrounding darkness, and then the ship was moving above escape velocity and away from its spot in orbit. Once they had gone a decent distance, Chanyeol pressed the button and began scanning through the menu. Despite his seemingly extreme reaction to his ship-connected auditory mods, Chanyeol did appreciate the usefulness of mech tech such as the minor eye implants that were currently tracking his movements to navigate through the option choices. “Let’s start with a 1 _m³_ volume with a mass of 7.4 E 10 _kg_.”

“ONE METER CUBED?” Jongdae screamed, and Chanyeol whacked his knees on the instrument panel again.

“Is that a…. _problem?_ ”

“With that mass, it will be incredibly dense!”

Well, Jongdae was right, and possibly not even being over-dramatic for once. Chanyeol decided to reconsider. “Alright, what about a 2.0 E 3 _kg_ and 10 _m³_  ? Would that make a difference in our _g'_ s?”

Jongdae chuckled, although Chanyeol couldn’t tell whether it was from amusement or sheer relief. “It should. Why don’t you try it?”

Chanyeol selected his desired parameters and waited for something to change. There was nothing.

Then there was something. The gravitational field monitor showed an increase in the luminescent red numbers, representing an acceleration due to gravity higher than the predicted acceleration due to Cygnusa’s gravity. Jongdae’s Temp-Grav, whatever it was, must have worked.

“That’s neat,” Chanyeol said as the ship was pulled towards the object they had launched and the gas giant, the force from the current setting of the thrusters no longer the same magnitude as the gravitational forces in the opposite direction. He was unsure what else he _could_ say.

“Thank you! But maybe we should go before we hit something unfriendly?”

 

Chanyeol’s legs shook when he stood back on the station; now that he’d had a taste of space flight once again, he craved it with all his being, even as the station below him spun and what his mind registered as “gravity” made him unsteady.

Jongdae, too, was a bit unsteady, and if Chanyeol hadn’t known better, he might have assumed Jongdae was a few past tipsy. “Zero-grav swelled your brain?” Chanyeol joked; Jongdae didn’t even roll his eyes, just leaned a little heavier on Tan’s trusty metal shoulder. They both knew that the ship protected them from such swelling under the maximum no-helmet speed, and that the ship and the helmets would protect them at higher speeds, but it was a common enough joke made in reference to the few unlucky early space travelers.

“It’s your presence that’s intoxicating,” Jongdae deadpanned, but a smile crept onto him like a particularly lazy big cat when Chanyeol burst into stunned chuckles. Speaking of big cats, Tan whacked Jongdae with their large—and heavy—metal head. “Ow, ow! Bad Tannie!”

Tan blinked at him in what Chanyeol realized was the perfect picture of mechanical innocence. “Good Tannie,” Chanyeol said, and the cat walked right out from under Jongdae, abandoning him for the human more useful for their own plans.

“I hate cats,” came the groan from the floor. “You should have gone with hyungie!”

“I love cats, huh Tannie?”

Once Jongdae had regained his footing and Chanyeol was passably stable in his, they could hear the station’s chimes calling out a late hour. “I should probably go,” Chanyeol said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Tan had taken to sitting between them and was going through the motions of grooming their paw, although Chanyeol thought it was slightly odd given that the mechanical cat had no mouth and therefore no tongue.

“You should go,” Jongdae agreed, transferring a kit holding some tools Chanyeol knew by sight but not by name from hand to hand. “But can we exchange comms? If you want, we could get together tomorrow morning around nine. I think it might be helpful to have a hacker who can help us pinpoint Minseok’s location, and get us past technological barriers it would take me far too long to break through. I have someone in mind, and maybe he would be willing to help us.”

Chanyeol hesitated afterwards, debating on whether to leave or whether to stay, so after a bit he took a few steps back. “Let’s plan on 09:00 here tomorrow?”

Something shone alongside the warehouse lighting in Jongdae’s eyes, but it was neither tears nor mech tech. “You’ve got it, sir!”

An eye-roll was truly required then. “Please just call me Chanyeol, Jongdae. A good night to you and Tan both,” Chanyeol said, and then the cool, unnaturally fresh air of the station was welcoming him to his walk home.

He left his shirt out to dry over a chair that night, the flowered crimson stain removed after much patience and hard work. Chanyeol had gotten good at both.

 

γ γ γ

 

The next morning Chanyeol assumed he must have slept, for he woke up, although he either didn’t dream or had forgotten his dreams before waking. He rolled over onto his comm and groaned as its corner embedded itself in his ribs. Fishing a single hand under himself, Chanyeol pulled the offending device out and checked it for notifications. His alarm hadn’t gone off yet, so it was still a countdown in the top left corner, but he had new messages from Jongdae.

 **_Jongdae, 02:30:_ ** _He said yes!_

Chanyeol snorted at the lack of context, but assumed Jongdae had to be referring to the hacker he had had in mind the night previous.

 **_Jongdae, 02:32:_ ** _I do need to be up-front with you about him though._

_He’s a good kid. He works hard, is discreet, and knows technology better than anyone else I know. But he is a Zoban._

Chills raced down Chanyeol’s spine, but they weren’t the intense electricity Chanyeol often got from Jongdae or Jongdae’s technology.

Chanyeol did not reply.

 

γ γ γ

 

When Chanyeol arrived outside the warehouse at 08:55, the echo of Jongdae’s words in his mind had grown louder. It appeared that although he could remove blood stains from his shirts, he couldn’t forget the words that had been shone into his head earlier that morning.

 _It would be better to bite the bullet and see how this Zoban truly was,_ Chanyeol decided once the station’s chimes began their nine o’clock routine, _than to stand around and suffer from his imagination._ The metal of the warehouse door sliding open for him stirred up a slight breeze that fanned across his face, just barely enough to help Chanyeol steel his resolve.

Jongdae’s warehouse did not look scrambled by the change which had entered it. In fact, the only apparent change was the being seated on a stool at Jongdae’s workbench, typing away on a commputer. They looked up as Chanyeol entered, and rose from their seat. Jongdae, bent over the table and working on what appeared to be a small battery pack, heard the stool scrape across the floor and grinned when he saw who had entered.

“Ah, Chanyeol! So great that you could make it, and why am I unsurprised that you are on time?” Jongdae was far too cheery for even the reasonable hour of nine in the morning, and Chanyeol was amused to notice the frazzled look the stranger wore as he walked down the excessively long path to the center of the warehouse. “This is Q, he/him, pride and joy of the underground resistance.”

“It is an h-honor, sir,” Q was attempting to discreetly hold on to the edge of the worktable, but Chanyeol saw that his knuckles were entirely white. “To finally meet you. Jongdae has told me about your exceptional piloting, sir.”

The kid was definitely younger than him and Jongdae, with a distinctly charming expression about him and his human form—even when it was full of poorly masked terror. Chanyeol wondered if effervescent, smiling Jongdae had threatened him, or if it had perhaps been Tan. He hadn’t been fond of hearing the voice of a foreign AI in his head—especially without warning—but despite the grudge that had left, the cat wasn’t half bad to be around.

Chanyeol hadn’t been quite sure if he had been somehow mistaking the color of Q’s hair when he had first laid eyes on him, but now he was positive that it really _was_ the most outrageous shade of moderately dark neon tangerine that Chanyeol had ever seen. The Zoban had dark eyebrows, though, so he suspected the human form Q had chosen had black hair, which had been subsequently dyed to the shade of those entirely fake Mars Cars gummy candies Chanyeol and his sister had loved to surreptitiously purchase when they were children. Now that Chanyeol thought more about it, he was positive he had seen Q walking in crowds in the station, and had even stood next to him on the Rail one time.

“The honor is mine,” Chanyeol said with all his grace, “to be meeting the hacker Jongdae holds in such high esteem.” That seemed to settle Q a bit, although Chanyeol pulling over a stool and sitting across the bench from him seemed to set him off again. He was clearly not relaxed, and Jongdae was looking a bit too smug for Chanyeol’s liking as he nibbled on the end of a rainbow fruit roll-up. “Jongdae, is Tan here?” The sounds of typing resumed as Q went back to his work. Chanyeol hadn’t heard the click of the cat’s claws yet, however, and it was somewhat disconcerting after spending so much time in their company the day before.

Jongdae made an odd noise, odd enough for Chanyeol to look at him. “They’re stocking up on supplies for our voyage,” the engineer said, although the words came out much faster than Chanyeol was expecting.

“Ah, okay.” Chanyeol set the backpack he had been wearing down on the workbench, gently enough that it wouldn’t disrupt Q. “I packed what I will need here.”

“I see you have the same faith in Q’s capabilities as I do,” Jongdae remarked in a very conversational manner. Although he wasn’t surprised that they were having this discussion, Chanyeol was somewhat taken aback that it was taking place _right in front of its subject._ Then: “You never replied to my comms. I thought you might have backed out until you walked through my door this morning.”

Rather than the lightning from before, Chanyeol felt frost sending feelers up his spine. He hesitated before replying, and almost as if he too could feel the frost, Jongdae’s eyes softened. “I do not doubt that he is the best hacker you could find,” Chanyeol replied, cursing how the words came out rather stuck. “I also do not doubt that him being Zoban plays some part in that.” He swallowed hard, struggling with uncertainty whether to flee or fight.

“You…. you won’t need to do either,” Jongdae said, and Chanyeol winced. He definitely hadn’t meant to say that out loud, and now Q was staring at him.

“Sir…” Chanyeol looked over at their newest addition, and found that Q was at least brave enough to look Chanyeol directly in the eye as he spoke. “I have been recruited to help track Minseok’s whereabouts. I have been expressly forbidden by the terms of my contact from engaging in physical contact with you unless you initiate it, must be in the presence of at least one other if in a space with you, and may not work with any AI other than my tracking and locating machine learning algorithms without your permission. Any serious violation of the terms, to be decided by you or Jongdae, results in—and I quote—‘Disembowelment by Tan, followed by Jongdae crushing your’—that means my—‘bones with his favorite steel-soled boots and then testing one of his new prototypes on me.’”

Ah. No wonder Q had looked so terrified when Chanyeol had walked in.

Perhaps Chanyeol had forgotten the whole _Jongdae is a weapons engineer who just served in a war_ part. He doubted that the horrible sentencing would pass in full if something involving Q went wrong, but the merciless quality to the words chilled Chanyeol. Jongdae was a good person, Chanyeol believed, but they had evidently made similar decisions or followed like orders in the past. Chanyeol recognized his tone, and suddenly thought he understood what swam in the engineer’s mind a bit better.

“Have you ever drawn blood, Q?”

The Zoban shook his head. “No, sir. I was not drafted into the war.”

Chanyeol did not want to ask why. “Are you competent with a weapon?”

“Yes, sir. I am comfortable with a few of Jongdae’s longer-range firearms.”

Jongdae stopped pacing and leaned against the worktable near Chanyeol. “He’s right. I have him test my sniper rifles, and although he didn’t mention it, he is also quite good with handguns.”

That would do. Chanyeol hoped that they didn’t have any issues which required—or ended in—a shootout, but knew better than to not plan for something of the sort.

“Thank you, Jongdae!” Q exclaimed, clearly at least somewhat familiar with the engineer, and Chanyeol wondered how they had met. It wasn’t as if he was jealous or anything, though. “Oh, the model has finished its current predictions based on Minseok’s past location data that you gave me.”

Chanyeol and Jongdae both stepped around to look at the screen of Q’s commputer. “See those?” Q pointed to the list of predicted coordinates, and both humans leaned in towards it. “They say Minseok is likely not far, perhaps two or three star systems over. Jongdae, do you happen to have his Council-given comm frequency?”

What Q was referring to was a special comm unit given to field agents, which appeared like a typical comm unit but operated on the Council’s network. The strength of these units lay in that even when one was captured, upon cracking or unlocking the unit, its interface appeared perfectly normal. The Council’s frequencies were different and random for every single unit, so without prior knowledge it was impossible to tell that it was a Council-given comm rather than a civilian comm. “Yes, I do have Minseok’s frequency, although he has not given me the usual updates from it for approximately two weeks.”

As Jongdae was reciting the frequency to Q, Chanyeol heard the familiar click of Tan’s claws on the warehouse floor. He turned to help them unload the bags that had been slung over their shoulders, happy to have something to do while he was waiting to be told to start piloting them in search of Minseok. Once everything had been set down, however, Tan spoke softly to Chanyeol. “May we talk in private?”

The corner of the warehouse Tan led Chanyeol to was clearly their corner, filled with an exceedingly large plush dog bed and some neatly stacked polishing and light repair materials on a shelf nearby. “Please sit,” Tan urged him, so together they sat down on the plush bed. “I wish to apologize for my actions yesterday. There is no excuse for me invading your privacy in such a way, particularly when you must have strong memories of other AIs due to your profession.”

For a moment, Chanyeol simply stared at the cat. Of all the possible conversations, this was the one he had least expected. “Thank you, Tan.” The mechanical feline cycled their optics and dipped their head, making it look like they were blinking at Chanyeol. “You are right in that it was my previous work with AI that upset me, and I would like to tell you that it was not a reaction to you personally.”

AIs and mechanicals were still often considered to be sentient in a different way from “live” beings, and this was not something Chanyeol had doubted in the past. Looking at Tan in that moment, he realized that perhaps he had been wrong. He would try to discuss this with Jongdae later, once the whole _Rescue the partner_ business was over.

“Hey Chanyeol, Tan! Are you two almost ready?” Speaking of Jongdae, Chanyeol thought.

“Yes, we will head right over!” Tan called back, and gave Chanyeol an affectionate swipe with their cheek before standing. “Alright flyboy, it’s your time to shine.”

 

The cockpit felt like Chanyeol had never left it. Jongdae was getting permission for them to leave while Q was settling in at a station near where Tan had been before, carefully protecting his commputer in a Space Caseᵀᴹ. Tan entered last, padding in and taking the same spot as during the test flight.

“I’m reminding you all, it’s going to be a hell of a long week because we can’t travel at too large a fraction of the speed of light or we risk getting to our location and finding that years or even decades have passed for Minseok due to the Lorentz Factor. My personal recommendation is that Jongdae and Q spend most of the time Under, while Tan and I look after the ship.” Chanyeol could feel the feline’s gaze on him as he spoke, but it was almost warming to him.

Jongdae appeared to be startled by this. “You two will be fine on your own?”

“Yes, we will be. Won’t we, Tan?”

Tan replied to him in a burst of code, rapid clicks and coos that left Chanyeol hopelessly lost. It seemed to mean something to Jongdae, however, because he was sighing and shaking his head. “Alright, Tannie, I believe that you two can do it. Q, are you okay with being Under for so long?”

Q leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “I have to wake twice a day to re-check the location of Minseok’s Council comm and spend the last day awake, but other than that, it should not be a problem.”

“Then we have reached an agreement. Preparing to lift off to approach station exit in twenty seconds.”

 

γ γ γ

 

Time seemed to pass differently when Chanyeol and Tan were the only ones awake. They were traveling at 0.003 _c_ in the hopes that time would not pass so differently in their surroundings at that velocity. It almost reminded Chanyeol of the road trips he had taken with his family growing up planet-side, except that this was much more his style.

It was black outside, but never completely dark. Distant star systems and—even farther out—other galaxies surrounded the ship with their brilliant glows, and for a while Tan and Chanyeol amused themselves by seeing what EM radiation they could pick out. Tan was much better at this by virtue of their built-in sensors, but Chanyeol enjoyed using his comm to pick out waves in the visible light band and lower frequencies. The ship was built to stop any light with a frequency higher than violet, so Chanyeol and Tan never found anything within or above the ultraviolet range—a comforting thought that Jongdae’s creation was not failing them.

Chanyeol’s favorites were the radio waves. He listened to them crackle over his comm for hours, fast radio bursts from unknown sources passing through the radio in his comm to propagate in the atmosphere of the ship’s joined cockpit and cabin as sound waves.

He slept to the sounds of the unknown, their rhythmical screams enough to keep his own screaming mind at bay.

It was a few days in when Tan approached Chanyeol during his breakfast. “May I lay beside you?” they asked, and Chanyeol froze where he had been drinking one of his awful juice pack-esque liquid meals.

“Sure,” he replied, watching as the large feline carefully settled down next to him and scooted in until warm metal touched Chanyeol’s side.

Quiet. Chanyeol remembered he had once been an extrovert, but that had been beaten out of him early on in his service. Tan was the one to speak next. “Minseok used to have me sleep at the foot of his and Jongdae’s bed, like one of the original Earth cats. He would polish me every other evening before he and Jongdae ran off together, and then they’d open the door for me later.”

“He sounds like he was a good master,” Chanyeol replied, wanting to say something but only able to hope that Tan took his words well.

The cat turned their head’s position on the floor so that they could meet Chanyeol’s eye. “Yes, Minseok was always good to me. He treated me as an equal, like how he treated Jongdae when they were working in the lab together. But he really was the best to Jongdae. I’m not sure I believe in love, but if it has ever existed, it was present between those two.”

“Jongdae’s different now.” Tan offlined their optics, but Chanyeol kept staring at where dark metal blended into light below the sensors. “I hope we find Minseok and he can bring Jongdae back to himself.”

The cat rolled over before Chanyeol could say something in response.

“Or that, if we don’t find Minseok, you are able to bring the old Jongdae back to us.”

 

γ γ γ

 

Chanyeol kept Q under close watch when he was awake and working on his programs. He wasn’t particularly skilled at programming or hacking himself, but Q was willing to walk Chanyeol through the work as best he could. Chanyeol couldn’t tell whether the helpfulness came from Jongdae and Tan’s threat, or from the kind of person Q was.

Minseok’s location, according to his comm, had not moved substantially since they had been watching it. It appeared to be in a residential area, so the trio suspected that Minseok was lying low.

Every “morning” when Chanyeol woke up and every “night” before he went to sleep in the pilot’s chair, he went to check on Jongdae where he lay Under in one of the small crew’s quarters in the back. Chanyeol didn’t think he had ever seen such a peaceful look on Jongdae’s face before then.

 

Q came out from Under for good two days before they were supposed to arrive, one day earlier than had been planned. Tan kept close watch on him, and stress immediately began lining his face. Chanyeol watched him work from a distance for the most part, and only checked in before heading to sleep. He wasn’t sure if Q slept, or if he simply sat in the back watching his commputer and waiting for the models to complete. Of course, once one was done, he would run it again with updated data.

It was on the second day that Chanyeol decided he had to do something, like it or not. “Q, please,” he began. The Zoban jumped at being addressed, and cast a nervous glance around the ship to check that Tan was indeed within both sightline and earshot, and watching the pair carefully. “Please sleep. I’ll wake you up if the model comes up with an error message, and when we’re getting close to the Council comm’s last transmitted location.” Q looked rather stricken at his words, so Chanyeol decided he had to come up with a reasonable enough _sounding_ explanation. “If you’re exhausted, you’ll only be a liability to us all when we go in to try to find Minseok.”

“I—I don’t want to die.”

“I know, cutie. I don’t want you to die, either.”

Q stared at Chanyeol in apparent disbelief, and Chanyeol couldn’t blame him. “But Jongdae says you hate me.”

Chanyeol sighed, and his shoulders bobbed as he did so. Q tracked the motion carefully, living as he was upon a constant hair-trigger. “Not you, never you. What do you know of the AIs the Galactic Council’s warships used?”

 

Jongdae was barely contained energy as _Horololo_ approached the interstellar hub home to Minseok’s last known location. Like the Cygnus hub, it was shaped in rings to simulate gravity for its inhabitants, and it shone brightly in the light of the nearest star. It was called the Crescent Station, and none of the crew onboard _Horololo_ had chanced to visit it before.

He was silent when he set bracelets down before Chanyeol and Q. Tan was not purring, so they could very clearly hear the soft _thunk_ when they were placed on the table. “Keep the safeties on and don’t use them at all if possible, these and easily-disrupted atmospheres don’t mix very well.”

As soon as they had docked, Jongdae led the crew off and chatted with the customs officer about hoping to pick up his partner. It was a short visit, on and off, so they didn’t have bags to be searched. Once they had cleared customs, Q stepped to the front with his trusty comm in hand. He had transferred the coordinates he needed from his commputer to his comm to speed up the locating process, and now the trio followed him as he started off across the station.

The station itself was darker in character than Cygnus'. The scaffolding was made of a different material, Chanyeol assumed, and it had windows rather than a transparent exterior. “We’re on the correct street it looks like,” Q informed them, and both Jongdae and Tan walked a bit faster. Hearing the _click click click_ of Tan’s claws on the walkway once again raised the fine hairs on the back of Chanyeol’s neck, and he was suddenly reminded of the way the cat had felt like an omen to him at their first meeting.

_An omen, or a harbinger?_

The district they were walking through was residential, just as Q had suspected it would be. No flags hung on balconies or windows, although there were many empty hangings and flagpoles. The sight chilled all of them, even Tan.

“Should be this one on our right,” Q said after they had been walking for a good half-hour, pointing at a dimly lit apartment complex. “Let’s see if we have any idea which unit…..”

Q and Chanyeol began inspecting the exterior of the building, but Jongdae stopped before the list of unit numbers. Tan stood a ways away from them all, tail carried low.

“Try 3.2.24,” Jongdae called, and they all moved in the direction of that particular unit—until they were stopped by a door.

“Permission to use a program to unlock?”

“Granted.”

Q pressed his comm against the comm pad and the program started running. Chanyeol stepped in closer to shield him from view, and after a moment Jongdae realized what he was doing and stepped in too. Tan quietly appeared behind them, still seeming quite subdued.

Their steps in the hallway were even louder than Tan’s claws, and Chanyeol had a sudden wonder if Tan sheathed their claws when they wanted to stalk silently. That cat had snuck up behind him and the others before, but he had never considered it. Chanyeol wanted to laugh at the thought, seemingly so unrelated to everything that they were doing, but didn’t. Instead, he could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

The numbers _3.2.24_ stood out in bright relief from the door, and the threshold was covered in dust. “I will try the same program on this door,” Q said, trying his hardest to not let his voice shake. Nobody replied, the area feeling like a place worthy of being respected by silence.

The click of the deadlock unlocking was deafening.

“Don’t talk,” Jongdae whispered as he cautiously opened the door. Chanyeol and Q nodded at him, and Tan held the door open for them to enter. The door locked behind them, and it sent lightning rather than frost up Chanyeol’s neck. “Follow me carefully. There may be traps.”

A faint rattle sounded consistently, right on the edge of consciousness, but Jongdae insisted on checking every room thoroughly and methodically before tracking it down. They found the source soon enough; it was a small apartment, and in the last room Minseok’s Council-issued comm lay vibrating in the center of the barren floor.

Something was clear based on the amount of dust accumulated on the floor. “He isn’t here,” Q said, although it was hardly necessary.

Dark clothing and white jacket blurred together before Chanyeol’s and Tan’s eyes, and then Jongdae was grabbing ahold of Q by his shirt collar. “You had one job. ONE JOB.”

Q fell still and silent; Chanyeol was frozen. His fingers wouldn’t move when he tried to curl them; his power was gone. “I told you to _find Minseok,_ but he’s not here.”

If eyes could ever have begged for mercy, the boy’s would have.

Chanyeol’s breaths were fast and shallow in his chest; he couldn’t possibly imagine how Q was handling it. “Tan, your opinion?” Jongdae snarled—the feline hadn’t budged an inch following his words.

“Q is not in the wrong. Nothing in the terms of contract says that he faces death for not finding Minseok; that is reserved for if Chanyeol finds himself severely threatened by him.” Tan stalked forward then, moving towards Jongdae with those bladed eyes. “And you are not my master. I would rather serve a dead man than one who leads by fear, and cannot help but wonder how disappointed my master would be if he could see you now.”

Jongdae let go of Q and stepped back, but Chanyeol could see that his anger was merely redirected. “Minseok would be ashamed of you,” Tan repeated. This time, however, the words appeared to sink in. “If you will be civil, you may fly back with us. If not, you can find your own way home.”

“I—“

“Walk, don’t talk.”

Tan herded Jongdae to the front door, sharpened edges just enough to keep the engineer on his toes. Q stayed where he had been confronted, staring straight at where Jongdae’s eyes previously were. Chanyeol was honestly lost for words, knowing he had to say something, perhaps something comforting, but lacking the words with which to express anything. “Q?”

Q did blink then, and Chanyeol slowly inched his way into the Zoban’s line of sight. “It’s probably time for us to go, Q. You’ve done well, we never could have reached this comm without you.”

“But he’s not here.” Yes, Chanyeol had wanted to see some change, but he certainly hadn’t wanted it to be the tears which were quickly pooling in Q’s eyes. “Jongdae is going to have Tan kill me. Jongdae is going to kill me. I’m going to die, and I never got to say goodbye to—”

“Sshh, Jongdae isn’t going to kill you. I won’t let him; it’ll have to be over my own dead body. Listen, Q….” Chanyeol watched as Q start shaking silently, and he wished for nothing more than his old personality back—the one which let him comfort almost anyone.

“C-Changmin.” Q took an unsteady step forward, and for a split second Chanyeol was deeply confused. “My name’s Changmin.”

“Well then, Changmin….” Something friendly whispered in Chanyeol’s head then, and he decided that it was worth being turned down if there was a chance of him helping. “I’m not whoever you didn’t get to say goodbye to, but may…. may I give you a hug?” That, at the very least, Chanyeol could do.

Even in the station with no view of space, Chanyeol could see starshine in the other’s eyes. He wasn’t expecting Changmin to nod, but he still stepped forward to embrace the other. Changmin was warm against him even as his tears soaked into Chanyeol’s shirt, and Chanyeol found himself not disliking the physical contact as much as he usually did. “You have done a wonderful job tracking down Minseok’s comm and getting us to its location. Jongdae’s just overwhelmed because he thought Minseok would be at the first place we checked, and it’s like he’s lost him all over again.”

Changmin’s words were somewhat muffled by Chanyeol’s shoulder and shirt. “I will try my hardest to pinpoint Minseok’s true location from the comm.”

“I have no doubt that you will try your hardest. But Minseok has always been his own responsibility, not even Jongdae’s, and certainly not yours.” While Changmin had appeared almost majestic with the tears in his eyes, he now appeared somewhat more amusing with his hair half crushed.

The Zoban didn’t nod again, but Chanyeol knew that he was mulling over the words. Then he moved and picked up the comm with gentle hands, looking at the screen. “I think I’m ready to go home and look at this now.”

 _Home?_ _Did he mean the Cygnus station, or Horololo? Was he even_ ** _from_** _the station in the first place?_

“Maybe I can show you how to crack it, if you’re interested.”

Chanyeol blinked in sudden surprise, and Changmin gave him a watery smile. “You probably have a knack for it, after all.”

 

γ γ γ

 

The ship felt smaller. There was the same amount of available (and recycled) atmosphere, but less room to breathe. It was like Jongdae took up more space than before by simply being present, and Chanyeol didn’t like it at all. But to his credit, Jongdae was the one to bring it up first.

“Changmin,” he said, and their hacker quickly set down the comm he had been holding and snapped into good posture. “I know it isn’t enough for you just to hear this, but…. I should not have taken my anger out on you. That was wrong, and I am sorry.”

Changmin finally moved his arm. “Thank you, Jongdae…. If you want to know, I finally figured this out. It’s a message sent on a timed schedule.” Changmin lifted the comm slightly sheepishly. “Looks like you didn’t need me, after all.”

Chanyeol bumped him with a shoulder. “Maybe we needed you for something other than the hacking we originally thought we needed.”

Perhaps the Zoban flag, with its bright blue skies and the white flower blooming across it, made a bit more sense to Chanyeol when Changmin’s eyes changed to cerulean at Jongdae’s smile.

 

_One month, two weeks, and five days later, as measured by the crew._

 

“Aligning with the scavengers' ship,” Chanyeol announced. “Initiating ‘dock.’”

Jongdae laughed wholeheartedly at that. “What a polite way of putting ‘breaking and entering!'” It didn’t last long, though, because soon the metal of _Horololo_ was very quietly scraping against the exterior of the other ship. “Alright, Tan, keep an eye at home. Chanyeol, Changmin, and I have got this!”

Chanyeol tried not to watch as Jongdae trailed a palm up his own neck to press it against the small chip near his hairline. “They’ve got nowhere else to take him now,” Jongdae grinned, although it was the sort of grin a big cat out on the prowl may have worn.

A laser made quick work of the scavenger ship's hull close to the mess hall. Jongdae caught the falling metal with gloved hand; he and Chanyeol boarded the ship first. Changmin followed, footsteps nearly as hushed as their favorite mechanical cat. “Turn right,” he said. “We can walk through the hall as a shortcut to the crew’s quarters.”

Mirth danced in Changmin’s eyes: “Given how close Minseok’s tracker is to yours now, I expected you to be instructing us to move faster.” Chanyeol resisted the urge to snort, although he did allow himself a silent smile.

Jongdae, however, shook his head. “It’s taken us six tries and too long a time. We can’t lose him now because we became sloppy.”

 _Sloppy. Right._ Chanyeol would give his best and his all. He wondered what Minseok would be like when they found him—more like him or more like Jongdae, or in more than one piece. But such thoughts didn’t serve Chanyeol well, so he worked on moving slowly and carefully across the exposed hall beside Jongdae.

Once they were out of the hall, they found the corridor leading towards the crew’s quarters somewhat less open. Boxes and crates were piled against the walls, although there was still plenty of room to walk through, and Jongdae wiggled his eyebrows at the others as they passed by some of the cargo. Chanyeol wondered if he knew or could tell what was in those packages.

“We’re here,” Changmin said, effectively halting the others. “Alright…. testing door lock.”

The door gave them a happy chime when Changmin’s comm program cracked the comm ID-code, and Jongdae cautiously poked a foot inside. Like the very first time Chanyeol had seen him, a leg was the first part of Jongdae to appear in Minseok’s line of sight. Chanyeol wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see when he stepped into the quarters, but it certainly wasn’t _that_.

Where Jongdae was electricity, Minseok was ice; it was clear even in the way he sat, relaxed on the surface as he slept but frozen inside. “Friday?” Jongdae asked, still hidden most of the way by the door. Minseok’s eyes slid open and Chanyeol and Changmin could have sliced through the tension in the room with a knife. Or, you know, a laser.

“Vroom vroom.” Jongdae nodded and pushed the door open the rest of the way. The quarters appeared entirely typical, a neat little desk and tidily made bed. The handcuffs? Much less typical, although no one was really surprised to see them. Talents such as Minseok’s were hot commodities for the scavengers, and Chanyeol wondered how much money they’d been making off of him. Enough to make it worth keeping him alive and at least externally intact, that’s for sure.

Changmin took a quick survey of the room. He had gotten the structure and setup of an average scavenger ship of the same model as this from Jongdae, and had already instructed the others to stay out of view of the camera built into the wall with the door. The virus Changmin had spent the past month coding was working ruthlessly, and soon his comm was vibrating softly in his hand right after the camera systems went dark. “We’re good,” he announced, and then Jongdae was scrambling over to kneel beside Minseok on the bed. Changmin appeared busy poking at his comm; Chanyeol wasn’t sure where he fit in this whole situation, so he hung back.

“You’re—you’re okay?” Jongdae had practically grabbed Minseok by his cheeks, albeit rather carefully, and for a second Chanyeol feared they were about to start making out right then and there. But no, he had watched a few too many movies, because they just staring into each other’s eyes like the hidden rules of the universe were found there. That being said, Chanyeol was quickly realizing that Minseok was quite easy on the eyes, with his fluffed grey hair and widened kitty-eyes and, of course, the adorable cheeks Jongdae was _still_ holding. Then, “What happened to your hair?”

Oh. Maybe the hair hadn’t been dyed grey when Minseok had left. But that assumption was the least of Chanyeol’s problems because, for starters, Minseok was Jongdae’s partner, and continuing on in the vein of larger obstacles, they were probably all about to die because someone was banging on the door very, very hard.

“Dae, I was a bit happier to see you when your mouth was shut. Unchain me, please?” Huh. Minseok’s voice was higher than Chanyeol had expected, but pleasant to listen to.

Jongdae finally let go of Minseok’s cheeks, and Chanyeol started breathing again and stopped looking at the floor. “Right. Ah, this is Changmin—” Changmin hustled forward and started working on the cuffs unprompted. “And that over there is Chanyeol!” Chanyeol gave an awkward half-wave as Changmin started muttering under his breath.

“This isn’t a coded lock!” He exclaimed after a bit more time, and Jongdae and Chanyeol both stared at him in horror. Minseok’s expression was still steady, composed while somewhat keen…. rather like Tan’s.

The banging on the quarters' door finally stopped, and then a voice came through. “Park Chanyeol, if you don’t open this door within the next twenty seconds, I am turning all those embarrassing videos I have of you as a kid into memes and uploading them to the InterGalac!”

Chanyeol’s jaw dropped. _There was no way…._ “Byun Baekhyun?”

“Open the damn door!” Chanyeol didn’t feel pinned by the others for once, merely uncertain.

There was cold fire in Minseok’s eyes. “You are stuck here whether you open the door or not.”

Chanyeol opened the door.

Maybe if he hadn’t, they would have stayed in limbo like that one famous cat. Neither alive, nor dead, but a range of probabilities. Their final state wouldn’t be set or known until someone checked.

Chanyeol opened the door, and they were alive. _“Funny meeting you here,”_ he almost said, except that he physically had no air with which to say it. His back hit the floor with a thud, and he braced himself for a blow to the throat or head. Except that there was a human octopus sprawled on top of him, apparently intent on hugging him rather than hitting him.

“You never wrote me back, asshole,” Baekhyun whined, and Chanyeol craned his neck to try to see his face. “I messaged your comm so many times.”

It must have happened when Chanyeol entered the Council’s Space Force. They gave all officers new comms, and the officers were forbidden from contacting civilians or even officers serving on another ship. Chanyeol had never liked that, but had followed along just the same. “I joined the Council…. they don’t allow comms to civilians in the SF.” Another thought occurred to him, and he winced. “Especially civilians dressed like a stereotypical scavenger.”

Baekhyun’s brow furrowed. “But I’m with him!” He pointed behind Chanyeol, who bent his head over backwards to try to see who he was pointing at.

“You’re with _Minseok?”_ Changmin exclaimed, and Minseok shrugged, rattling the chains.

“He’s an agent with distinctly better luck,” Minseok clarified, a touch wry. Beside him, Jongdae had a death glare on, and it contrasted rather strongly with the small smile Minseok was wearing.

“Please get off of Chanyeol.” Jongdae’s eyes were narrowed, and while Minseok didn’t have the blades Tan’s gaze did, Jongdae was certainly armed with swords.

Baekhyun, to his credit, stared Jongdae down. “You don’t give me orders.” They could hear their own breathing along with the ringing silence, and Chanyeol shimmied his own way out from Baekhyun. “Especially when you need me to break him out.”

“We don’t need you for anything,” Minseok said, shaking out his wrists, and Baekhyun blinked in speechless silence. Sure enough, the agent was holding a key between his thumb and index finger.

Fingers scrambling into his pocket, Baekyhun pulled out a whole wad of keys. “This is the key for your cuffs!” He exclaimed, showing them one key in particular before ping-ponging between staring at his key and Minseok’s key. “It has no duplicates!”

“That’s right,” Minseok smiled, slightly too pure. “No duplicates, although you might be one short.”

Well, Chanyeol’s mouth was definitely making a nice, round “O.” He hadn’t thought Changmin would possibly use one of his shifts for them, with the finite number in a Zoban's lifetime.

Jongdae spoke in the infuriatingly nasal voice Chanyeol had come to recognize as his purposefully annoying tone. “Check your arithmetic!”

“Don’t you singsong at me!” Baekhyun snarled back, and Minseok held his key a bit tighter.

Chanyeol nudged Baekhyun, hard. In the amount of time it took for Baekyhun to stop staring at Chanyeol, clearly stunned, Minseok had reached the closet and was pulling a…. gun? It wasn’t a kind Chanyeol had seen before; it was fashioned like one of those old Earth handguns, except it was clear and filled with some sort of translucent, tea-stained liquid.

“Leader was desperate enough to know how this worked that he kept it here, despite the dangers which should have been obvious to him before now.” Chanyeol took another look at the gun—based on the design, it was clear the safety was currently on.

Baekhyun didn’t seem particularly intimidated, but Chanyeol had grown up with him. A lot of his bravado came from fear. “What is it?”

Minseok smirked then. “It’s mine. Something my dear Chen made for me, actually.” Chanyeol felt both fright and a slight thrill race up his spine—the aforementioned engineer was also smirking, looking distinctly like he had gotten the cream. No wonder Tan was created as a cat.

“You’re Chen.” Perhaps Chanyeol had been wrong—he _could_ see terror in Baekhyun’s eyes.

“I am Chen, I am Jongdae, and I am Minseok’s partner. You had better start fucking begging him for mercy, because you left him at Leader’s whim when your time as an agent was finished.” The ship wasn’t rotating under them, but the floor still seemed to pitch and buck under their feet.

A sound. A familiar one at that—the sound of knees striking flooring. “Please,” Chanyeol begged. “Spare him. Baek can do good, and the only reason we are alive right now is because he was the one to notice our arrival. Please, give him another chance.”

He, Park Chanyeol, was afraid to meet Jongdae’s eyes for fear of being sliced beyond saving.

Footsteps. Chanyeol wished that they were Tan’s or even Changmin’s, but they were not. Jongdae’s fingers appeared in Chanyeol’s limited field of vision, palm up and the lines of his knuckles unbent. “We wouldn’t kill Baekhyun,” Jongdae murmured. “We’ve seen enough killing in our lifetimes.”

Chanyeol raised his chin. Jongdae’s eyes were wide, but the naked blades were sheathed. “I meant to leave him on this ship awaiting rescue, like he did with Minseok.”

Minseok’s head tilted; Baekhyun looked a bit further away from sobbing. “Maybe that is what he deserves,” Minseok said, “but we do owe him our lives. If you need transport, sir, there will be a place on our ship for you.”

A shaky nod. “Thank you, sir.” Jongdae seemed to know what Chanyeol was thinking, because he mouthed the “sir” along with Baekhyun. Chanyeol, despite the situation, couldn’t help but smile.

Sudden vibration against the floor made everyone startle in sync. It was the key Minseok had been holding, jumping and hopping in place.

“Come on, Changmin!” Chanyeol wasn’t sure whether or not to hold his breath. He, like most non-Zobans, didn’t know the number of times Changmin could shift forms; it depended on the individual, but the number was a closely-guarded secret.

After a painful stretch of time—it could have been a second, it could have been half an hour—the object stopped phasing between key and Changmin, and left only Changmin. Their hacker looked significantly more drained, but otherwise the same as before he had turned himself into the solution to Minseok’s cuffs.

“The rest of the scavengers must be coming for us by now,” Changmin panted, pushing his hair back from his forehead where it had been plastered by sweat. “We can’t leave Baekhyun to be killed by them for letting us go. We’re taking him with us.”

Baekhyun sighed. “Alright, fastest way back to your ship is through the cafeteria. That’s a prime spot to be trapped, though.”

Minseok lifted the firearm he was holding. For some reason, Jongdae snickered; it was probably an inside joke, Chanyeol thought. “We’re either getting out of here now, or not at all.”

“All in!” Changmin cheered. Everyone was relieved to see him light up in a smile, even Minseok.

“On the count of three, we run for it together. One, two, three!”

Cheap hall lighting blurred together before Chanyeol’s eyes. Minseok and Jongdae were leading the way, and he could see flashes of Changmin’s vibrant orange hair in his peripheral vision. Nobody jumped out at them in the corridor, and they were skidding around the corner into the cafeteria in no time at all.

Their luck was not to last. As soon as Baekhyun had cleared the doorway, the exit in front of them was blocked by a set of understandably peeved scavengers. Upon stopping abruptly and looking around, Chanyeol saw who was likely Leader approaching from the entrance they had just used.

“Start talking and we start shooting.” Jongdae’s tone was deadly serious, and Chanyeol was once again unsure of whether or not he was bluffing.

“Stop talking and cover your ears,” Changmin whispered. At this point, everyone was past questioning him and did as they were told.

It was like they had not known sound before. It howled around them, a deafening shriek. Chanyeol’s face contorted in pain, even as he pressed his palms against his ears with all of his strength. He wasn’t sure when it ended; his eyes were squeezed too tightly shut to see, and all he could hear was the ring.

Changmin’s scream rang, and rang, and rang. When his balance finally returned, Chanyeol straightened and could hardly believe his eyes. Scattered around the small group was a ring of writhing bodies, the back-forth slide of them across the floor creating odd squeaks that Chanyeol was just barely able to hear alongside the ringing scream. “By my wings,” he said. The black floor was no longer purely black, and the parallel to the time Tan whispered in Chanyeol’s ear made him shiver. “Will they die?”

“No,” the Zoban responded. “The damage likely won’t be permanent, but they will be out of commission for the next few days. The crew is bigger, though, so we’ve got to fly before the others get here!”

A second scramble for the ship began. This time, they all went flying inside one after the other. Tan had the door open for them, and it slammed shut right after Changmin, the final one, entered. “Schematics show that although they haven’t restocked on ammo recently, high-powered lasers are equipped on the bottom of the ship—enough to slice a nice hole in our hull if we’re hit, and we’d definitely be done for then! Survivability isn’t a strong suit of this ship.” Paws scampered as Tan raced back into position. “Chanyeol, I suggest you drop a large Temp-Grav that will make the scavengers burn their fuel and send us on a short sprint of .7 _c_.”

“You’ve got it, Tannie!” Chanyeol shouted back, priming the engines for flight. He hadn’t had enough time to perform a pre-flight check, so he could only pray things wouldn’t break. “Will you tell me when to punch it?”

 _Horololo_ rumbled around him as Tan replied. “Do you want me to talk to you?”

“Yes.” Chanyeol closed his eyes and wrapped his fingers around the yoke. “Through the tech, I might not hear you otherwise.”

 _Like this?_ The voice was shockingly soft, reserved almost, yet undoubtedly Tan’s. _I don’t want to hurt you._

_Yes, just like that. You won’t hurt me, Tan._

Beside Chanyeol, Jongdae was carefully strapping Minseok into the shotgun seat. “I can’t believe you were able to run after losing so much muscle,” he was saying, close to tutting, and Chanyeol felt almost as if he were hearing something he shouldn’t have been.

“I might be weak, but I’m not dead yet,” Minseok groused, and Jongdae gave him a smile Chanyeol had never seen before. It was familiar, so familiar, like somehow the layers of strengthened glass Jongdae had put around his heart had been taken down.

Chanyeol didn’t think he’d see Jongdae smile like that again, and the thought threatened to crack his heart, so he focused his attention on something else. “Almost ready to go?”

Then Jongdae was standing before him, wrapping his own hands around Chanyeol’s where they were placed on the yoke. “We will go wherever, as long as you take us there.” The mech tech in Jongdae’s eyes spun slightly; Chanyeol wondered what it was doing.

 _Engines are ready for launch, and I have picked out the specifications for the Temp-Grav._ Chanyeol didn’t know what to say, so he dipped his head. He could feel Jongdae still watching him, and hoped his message was clear even without words. From the corner of his eye, he could see that Minseok was also watching him, but he didn’t look angry—he looked…. _satisfied?_

 _Thank you, Tannie._ Jongdae went back to strap and helmet in between Changmin and Baekhyun, and Chanyeol waited for the okay. “Sound off.”

“Ready.”

“Ready.”

“Ready.”

“Ready.”

_Ready._

“Let’s drop it and punch it,” Chanyeol said, and watched the lines of stars blur before him.

 

Time shortened. They didn’t spend long at .7 _c,_ only enough to escape the object’s gravity and travel a short distance away from the scavengers, but Chanyeol was still welcomed back to the world of 0.001 _c_ with the knowledge that time had slipped away from him—only a matter of tenths of seconds had passed for the crew, but longer had passed outside the ship. Time was always relative, but he hadn’t felt differences in how it was observed quite so distinctly before as now.

“We’re still about a week out from the Cygnus system, maybe a touch shorter if I can shave off some time,” Chanyeol announced, swiveling his chair to face the back. He couldn’t read the expressions on the others’ faces as they took off their helmets, but Jongdae seemed almost conflicted and Changmin somewhat irritated.

Tan padded over to the group seated in the back, and the cord connecting them to the wall stretched to accommodate. “This is the part where you’re supposed to kiss,” they said, and Chanyeol was sure that if they had eyes to roll, Tan would. “Better get on that.”

The smack of a retracting harness against the seat brought Chanyeol’s thoughts back in. _Right, Jongdae and Minseok had been busy when they had first seen each other._ Jongdae carefully stepped around Tan, tugging that white jacket off and dangling it on a finger.

“I think this belongs to you.” Jongdae’s tone was teasing enough that Chanyeol shifted uneasily, unsure whether or not it would be polite to keep watching.

Minseok grinned, wide and clearly from pure happiness. “I think it does, Dae Dae.”

 _Alright, Jongdae was settling into Minseok’s lap, so it was definitely time to look away._ Changmin, too, was staring at his own shoes, and Chanyeol was a bit amused to see how red the Zoban could turn. Baekhyun, however, was openly gawking. It was only when Baekhyun stopped appearing interested that Jongdae looked back up, and startled to find Jongdae right in front of him.

Tan growled softly from where they were lying stretched out on the floor. “Kim Jongdae, if you chicken out now I am flushing you out the airlock. And I even like chicken.” Once their mechanical companion said that, Jongdae’s sudden hand-wringing made sense.

Jongdae took a glance over at Minseok, who gave him a little but luminous smile and a small thumbs up, then looked Chanyeol in the eye. “Chanyeol, I have been wondering this for a while….” The longer Chanyeol looked, the more galaxies he saw reflected in the light and dark of Jongdae’s eyes.

“Just spit it out!” Minseok exclaimed. “We talked about this, Dae, as soon as you got close enough for the mid-range tech to work.” Jongdae swallowed hard, but his hands went still and his demeanor lightened.

Chanyeol wondered if he was about to fall into space, and whether it would be the expanse in Jongdae’s eyes or the void surrounding the ship. “MayIpleasekissyou?” Jongdae seemed to startle after the words raced out, and for a moment Chanyeol and Minseok both thought he was about to panic. Then he hauled in a deep breath and said it again. “Chanyeol, may I please kiss you?”

The expanse was the space Chanyeol fell into. “Well, if you’re going to be so polite about it, come here.” Lights exploded in Jongdae’s eyes, and Chanyeol couldn’t remember him seeming so excited other than when they had gotten Minseok back.

Jongdae’s hand was slow when he moved it to cup the back of Chanyeol’s neck, and a sudden squeak made him freeze. “Baekhyun, shut up,” Chanyeol said, and before he knew it, both he and Jongdae were chuckling. But as soon as they had stopped, Chanyeol moved forward and watched pleased surprise cover Jongdae before closing his eyes.

“Close your eyes, Jongdae! Make it romantic!” Baekhyun shouted, banging a hand against his seat. Apparently he simply couldn't help himself.

Sighs were better when they were pressed against his lips, Chanyeol decided. “Why don’t you kiss him yourself the—wait, you’d better not!” Jongdae seemed to have been caught by Baekhyun in the middle of deciding whether or not to climb onto the chair with Chanyeol, but now he was backing off. Chanyeol hoped Jongdae didn’t regret it, but—oh god, Minseok.

“But—but you have Minseok!” he exclaimed, suddenly flailing, and then Jongdae’s eyes were wide enough that they looked almost like Changmin’s. Chanyeol spun his chair around to face Minseok, and prepared to see ire.

He saw nothing of the sort. Rather, Minseok was wearing a cute little marshmallow smile, and the thumbs up was aimed at him this time.

Chanyeol was so, so confused, not to mention more than a touch distracted by Jongdae hovering so close.

Minseok leaned forward a bit, and Chanyeol lurched back in surprise. “I talked about this with Jongdae before I was assigned a mission, and we’ve talked about you in particular since I’ve gotten back. Benefits of mech tech, you know?” By this point, Chanyeol was certain that his mouth was flapping open and closed like a fish, and like the fish out of water, he wasn’t sure if he was actually breathing. “You’re—your lips are going grey!”

“Kiss him and bring back the color!” Jongdae shouted, and Baekhyun reached across to high-five him.

“Maybe you should do as he suggests?” In the row of seats behind Chanyeol, Changmin was miming taking a deep breath. Chanyeol followed his “instruction” and found he felt marginally more human after he’d breathed a few times, which was good because apparently Minseok had taken Chanyeol’s comment seriously. Had Chanyeol been serious in the first place? He had no idea, except that Minseok was moving in to kiss him, and similar to Jongdae’s it was still soft and chaste, but in the way of a promise.

 

Chanyeol couldn’t help but hope for the promise to be fulfilled.

 

γ γ γ

 

The six stumbled into a restaurant as an oddly moving mob, their legs shaky from space travels. They looked intoxicated, Chanyeol knew, as they attempted to reach one of the tables at the back. Someone was seated there already, and he rose when he saw the group approaching; Changmin sped past Chanyeol in a blur to greet him.

“Chanhee!”

It was helium and neon, electrified in the faint glow of the wall art and falling back to stable state. Chanyeol would have expected the mix of their dyed hair to be jarring, but rather it made them limned in brilliant orange that glowed almost white.

Tan bumped against Chanyeol’s thigh. They had pressed between him and Minseok, although they didn’t seem to want to linger for long. “Hey, Tannie, want some chicken too?”

“There isn’t any chicken _yet,”_ Tan groused, regardless of the fact that there would be no way for them to eat it without a mouth.

Minseok smiled at Chanyeol and Tan’s conversation, and reached down to pat Tan’s head. “Then we’d better fix that, huh?”

 

When the chicken came, everyone turned to Changmin. “Please, take a piece,” Minseok urged, and Changmin stared at him.

“Listen to your hyung,” Jongdae teased.

Changmin finally overcame his hesitance and chose a piece small enough to eat all at once; the others watched him carefully, how he perked up and his eyes started to sparkle as the flavor hit his tongue. “Mm!”

Chanhee leaned across the table a bit more. “Good?” A thumbs up. “Will you give me a piece later?”

Suddenly, golden brown entered his field of vision, held neatly between a pair of chopsticks. Chanhee listened and could hear the crispy batter being cracked through by the others, so he accepted the chicken and took it between his teeth. It made its own satisfying _crunch,_ and amusement was dancing in Changmin’s eyes.

“I knew you would come back to me,” Chanhee said after he was finished with his piece, and watched Changmin turn a bit pink.

“I knew you would wait for me,” Changmin replied, and across the table, Baekhyun started cooing.

Jongdae set down his chopsticks. “Yah, you’re not a mourning dove!”

Baekhyun sputtered. “How come everyone is partnered off except for me? _Me?”_

Chanyeol chuckled, and watched how Minseok’s eyes immediately flicked over to him. “What, because you’re so irresistible? I mean…. when you don’t open your mouth, I can see it.”

“Park Chanyeol, you had better stop it right now or—“

Minseok set his gun down on the table, effectively killing all conversations and arguments at once. “Who wants shots?” he asked.

“MEEEE!!!” Jongdae shouted, far too excited; Chanyeol started rapidly searching for an exit. “I’ve been waiting to have some of that Scotch for ages!”

It was Chanhee who started laughing, laughing himself to tears. Minseok lifted the gun and twirled it around a finger, making Changmin shriek. Several tables around them vacated—although they could not see the weapon, they most definitely had their ears spilt by Changmin. “That’s—that’s the best gun I’ve ever seen,” Chanhee heaved, practically doubled-over, and everyone around him besides Jongdae and Minseok gawked. Then it finally clicked, and Chanyeol pressed his fingers into his temple.

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” Chanyeol said. “You sold the scavengers _and_ us on a gun that shoots _alcohol.”_

Minseok shrugged, and flicked off the safety. “It’s all in the delivery: highly flammable liquid, low flash point, and so on. Tell them what they want to hear, and you’re useful to them. Jongdae?”

Jongdae opened his mouth on cue; Minseok aimed and fired. And Chanyeol and Chanhee were right—the gun dispensed the perfect amount of Scotch, and now Jongdae was pulling back with a rather smug smile. “Yes, we know,” Minseok sighed, although it was too fond to sound entirely irritated. “Dae Dae is the best weapons engineer in the galaxy.”

“It looks like tonight just got much more interesting, Yeol,” said Tan.

“Right as always, Tannie. Right as always.”

 

At some point, they ended up on an unknown couch with Chanyeol and Jongdae and Minseok making a pile in the middle, Changmin and Chanhee propped against each other on one end, Baekhyun on the other end, and Tan sprawled along the top—except that the cat didn’t really fit, so one of their paws was in Baekhyun’s lap and another was on top of Minseok’s head. “Wha’ time is’t?”

Chanyeol was mostly sure that was Chanhee. Right? “Time is relative,” Minseok groaned, then whined as someone hit his shoulder.

“Shut it, Einstein,” Baekhyun whined back, and Chanyeol didn’t think he would be particularly opposed to falling asleep then and there.

“Hey,” Jongdae said after a moment, sounding far too put-together, “what do you all think of leaving the station?” It was nice to feel the words against his back, Chanyeol thought. Whether it was Jongdae talking or the variety of alcohol the group had consumed following the draining of the Scotch Gun, Chanyeol had finally relaxed enough to be able to feel his shoulders again.

Quiet. Chanyeol tried to look at Tan’s body posture, but couldn’t get far enough past Minseok’s body to see. “Where would we go?” Changmin asked, hushed so as to not disturb the quiet.

“That’s up to Chanyeol.”

Suddenly, Chanyeol was happy Minseok was flat-out on top of him. He’d thought about this—of course he had, they had all needed some sort of escape fantasy while searching for Minseok in the endlessness of space—but was unsure whether the others would want to hear it. Minseok lifted his head and rested his chin on Chanyeol’s breastbone in the universal gesture of listening, and it gave Chanyeol the little bit of added nerve he needed. “Maybe…. maybe we could transport people who need it to safety? Given what happened to Minnie…. it’s not safe even though the war is over.”

“Minnie?”

“Oh.” Chanyeol couldn’t find it within himself to be sorry, especially not when Minseok reached out and booped him on the nose. “How are you still so coordinated?”

“Super secret agent skills,” Minseok giggled, and Chanyeol didn’t even need to see him to know that Jongdae was rolling his eyes.

“I’m in,” Changmin announced, and then promptly tumbled off the side of the couch.

There was a solemn moment of silence for him, but it was quickly broken. “Let’s buy a bigger ship!”

 

γ γ γ

 

The skyline stretched black against the back-lit horizon, the tops of the tallest buildings glowing with orange lines. “How is it being planet-side?” Jongdae asked. Chanyeol rocked on the balls of his feet, leaning against the railing of a balcony.

“Not bad,” he shrugged. “Although I do miss the expanse.”

Minseok pushed his glasses back up with an index finger. “Don’t get too restless, we’ll be out there again soon enough.”

“Soon,” Chanyeol agreed. _Soon, soon, soon,_  he added, and a few miles away, Tan thought back to him about rubbing their cheek against his side in greeting.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are at the end! I hope you enjoyed this fic and all the pop-culture sci-fi references it contains, and it is now time for me to thank the people who need thanking.
> 
> Mod Azula: thank you for supporting me and the other writers along our journeys, and I hope to write for another round of electriFIREd in the future!
> 
> I would not have seen this project through if not for my two lovely betas, S and J. S, it was lovely to work with you, and thank you for your gentle reminders, kind words, and sentence structure suggestions!  
> J, don't think I've quite forgiven you yet for making me pull out BOTH the MLA and Chicago style handbooks at 7:15am while on holiday visiting family overseas, only to find out that a) you were right and b) my grammar was incorrect.... I'm not serious, of course, because you really are a Wise Mentor to me.
> 
> Finally, thank you to L and R, my cat cheering squad. I miss you two sleeping by/on my head already.


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